"Thanks to your coaching, no doubt."
"No, no, no! I begin to think Lucy has a better head all round than mine. The fact is, Doris, I have to readjust my views of life somehow, and the only satisfactory basis on which I can build is the conviction that we have all been under a complete misapprehension as to my powers. There is something gloriously restful in the belief that one is nothing great, and is not called upon to do anything particular."
Doris smiled with serene liberality. Mona had been in her mind constantly during the last month.
"Very well," she said. "As long as you feel like that, go your own way. I am not afraid that the mood will last. In a few months you will be neither to hold nor to bind."
"Prophet of evil!"
"Nay; prophet of good."
"It is all very well for you, in your lovely leisure, realising the ideal of perfect womanhood."
"Don't be sarcastic, please. You know how gladly I would exchange my 'lovely leisure' for your freedom to work. But we need not talk of it. My mind is perfectly at rest about you. This is only a reaction—a passing phase."
"A great improvement on the restless, hounding desire to inflict one's powers, talents, and virtues—save the mark!—on poor, patient, long-suffering mankind. Oh, Doris, let us take life simply, and work our reformations unconsciously by the way. We don't increase our moral energy by pumping our resolutions up to a giddy height."
"I am not to remind you, I suppose, of the old gospel which some of your friends associate with you, that women ought always to have a purpose in life, and not be content to drift."